How I Like Neil Young: The Albums, pt. 1
This is an update of something I wrote on Tumblr about six years ago. Crack the code of my handy dandy profoundly subjective numerical rating scheme here.
Neil Young (1969) – 8
Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere (1969) – 8
After The Gold Rush (1970) – 8
Harvest (1972) – 8
Time Fades Away (1973) - 7
On The Beach (1974) – 9
Tonight’s The Night (1975) – 8
Zuma (1975) – 8
American Stars ’N Bars (1977) – 7
Decade (1977) - 8
Our quirky, quivering Canadian hero Neil Young first stepped on stage at American concert halls and television shows as the reticent artiste of hippie-country-rock supergroup-in-hindsight Buffalo Springfield. All I really need from them is on his 3LP compilation Decade, except for the Stephen Stills Sunset Strip protest anthem on multiple movie soundtracks. Soon going solo, Neil Young stepped out mewling ornate trippage under umpteen overdubs - a slight psychedelic fart by most estimations, but I dig it cuz he never did it again.
Restless against a wall of sound, Neil and Real Rock Jiminy Cricket David Briggs stole a power trio from within a groovy troop of rascals known as the Rockets and renamed them Crazy Horse. Though Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere still had some groovy trippage, Neil mostly liked to WILD OUT on his guitar over their amped-up stomps. For psychological reasons Graham Nash will always regret, Neil's Buffalo Springfrienemy Stephen Stills decided his hippie-country-rock supergroup-of-the-moment CSN needed a reticent artiste. This was occasionally a profitable surrender to chaos, though its impracticality created a market vacuum soon filled by the Eagles. All I really need from them - CSNY, I mean - is also on Decade.
Drafted into stardom and liking it, Neil began his matinee idol period with After The Gold Rush, a gorgeous platter that confidently slides between his sensitive folkie and shrieking freak sensibilities. The sequel Harvest has Neil's Biggest Hits followed by overbaked misfires. There’s an oft-out-of-print 2LP soundtrack I’ll rate if you buy it for me (”Handel’s Messiah” performed by an evangelist sect? Far out, Neil!), but I’d rather see the vanity film it soundtracks, as the sole new Neil song on it is also on Decade.
The matinee idol period ends with the death of Crazy Horse guitarist Danny Whitten and Time Fades Away, a new-songs-shrieked-live LP that Neil recorded using some kind of Fad-A-Phonic 3000 and was long incapable of remastering to his satisfaction. The raucous title track and the It Gets Weirder anthem “Don’t Be Denied” should have been on Decade, but if you really want to pay tribute to the moment, get Crazy Horse’s self-titled, Neil-less LP from 1971 - a ramshackle beauty of a posse album. Have a sense of what Whitten was about before you chase down Neil’s understandably frazzled reaction to losing him (if anything is worth owning from Crazy Horse’s Whitten-less follow-ups, no one has bothered to tell me. And I’ve had an ear out).
The cathartic wake comes on Tonight’s The Night, with On The Beach the squinty, smirky hangover. Amusingly, Beach was released first because Neil was a little embarrassed about what he’d gotten up to the night before (only an intervention by Rick Danko and some early SNL types got it off the reel-to-reel). Both albums are awesome mood pieces I’ll understand if you think I’m underrating, and I bet I’ll take them up a notch or two if I ever find myself single and howling in the ditch with some stinky compatriots. Not planning on it, though. (Writer's note: despite my plans, I've since found myself single and smirky, and have upped On The Beach a notch).
While the stinky compatriot known as Poncho lacked Whitten’s sly strut, people thought Neil’s band was made of cavemen anyway and the guy meshed well enough to get Crazy Horse’s name back on the cover. That first may look like a middle schooler’s blueprint for a vanside mural, but Zuma glows with the sense that Neil reclaimed a sound he could clomp around arenas with for the rest of his life.
Revitalized, Neil decided to troll Stephen Stills with a collaborative album of blase ‘70s star boogie credited to The Stills-Young Band, but initially listed on Spotify as “Neil Young with Stephen Stills." As I said, trolling. The rest of us got a legendary tour-canceling telegram and one good track for Decade. That terrific, Stills-pwning 3LP/2CD summary (you’d never guess which songs were rarities if he didn’t tell you) should have come next. Instead, Neil dropped an album where Side A is a doofy country pastiche and Side B, aside from two beauties featured on Decade less than six months later, has a seven minute fish (that’s fish, not Phish) fantasy over vibraphone and a two minute ode to homegrown. If you think that shit’s obtuse, wait till you read about his next decade!
Part 2 is here.